News Archive

Highly Experimental v2.05 fixes an occasional deadlock in Winamp 2. I also decided to add a convenient "Configure Plugin" button to the file info dialog, because the plugin configuration is annoying to get to from Winamp. Isn't it?

• Highly Experimental page

Highly Experimental v2.04 is out, featuring a number of bug fixes. As you know, Highly Experimental is my Winamp input plugin for PSF and PSF2 files.

• Highly Experimental page

Did you know that it's sometimes possible to create PSF2 soundtracks from PS2 games without any programming knowledge necessary? This starter kit will give you the tools to do that, plus some other helpful modules for the more adventurous who want to attempt original-driver PSF2 rips.

• PSF Ripping Help

USFV is a portable command-line utility for creating and verifying SFV (Simple File Verification) files. It's compatible with other SFV utilities such as the original Win-SFV32.

Just listen to what the critics are saying about USFV:

Indeed, I expect you would all enjoy it!

• USFV page

VB2rip is reborn! New options let you tweak the block interleave size, starting offset, and other settings, making experimentation with new formats easier than ever. Plus, two new games are supported: Psyvariar Complete Edition and Extreme-G 3.

• VB2rip page

Dexter - the Utility DexPlorer should have been - has now been updated with improved DexDrive detection and initialization code. If you had problems getting v1.0 to work, try this.

• Dexter page

I've decided to unearth an old experimental version of Bleep! (the NSF plugin for Winamp) that I never got around to releasing due to some unresolved bugs. There's no documentation, so what those bugs are, and what's new in this version, is up to you to figure out. Consider it an adventure!

• Bleep! page

Web hosting at lfx.org is, unfortunately, history. Since I was forced to change URLs anyway, I decided to seize the opportunity to finally get my own bling-bling domain!

If you have any links or bookmarks beginning with http://lfx.org/~corlett/, simply replace that part with http://www.neillcorlett.com/ and they should still work.

With any luck, this will be the last address change for a while...

The new PSF format spec is out. Highly Experimental v2.0 is out, and it plays PSF2s. From Playstation 2 games. Cool, huh?

New versions of PSFLab, and some new utilities such as mkpsf2, are forthcoming.

• PSF Central

No PSF2 yet, but it's getting closer.

Highly Experimental v1.09s is a fairly minor update as far as tangible improvements go, but it's completely different from v1.08 on the inside. You'll just have to take my word for it.

PSFLab v1.03 has been rebuilt with all the latest common library code, giving it a few new features such as the 7-Zip compression which debuted in PSF-o-Cycle.

• PSF Central

Here are two UNIX utilities I've been using for years on my home firewall. I finally decided to release the source.

Simple Time Slave acts as both a RFC868 (time port 37) client and server, synchronizing the system time with a remote RFC868 server while also acting as a server itself. The local service is only started after at least one successful remote sync, making it usable on PCs with faulty clocks.

Identsucks is a RFC1413 service which always returns "identsucks" for any query. Because IDENT, frankly, sucks.

• Simple Time Slave page
• Identsucks page

A PSF ripper's dream tool! I've been using an early version of this ever since January, with the Breath of Fire 3 soundtrack. But now it's improved, documented, and ready for release.

Use C code to patch game programs instead of hand assembly code. Mass-optimize without having to babysit each file. Auto-length tag, recompress using 7-Zip, update... it's all here and the perfect supplement to PSFLab.

• Available on the PSF Central page

I wanted to do a PSF rip of Suikoden, but there don't seem to be any sequenced songs there. Much to my surprise, the music is in a VB2-like format instead!

• So, VB2rip now supports Suikoden .8 files.

Now supporting the US version of Castlevania Chronicles.

• VB2rip page

It's like NSF - but for Playstation. A revolution is in the making for game music collectors.

I've done so much work on this, it needs its own section:

• PSF Central

Don't you wish you could just slap a Playstation memory card into your DexDrive, have a little window pop up that shows all the little game saves as Explorer-style icons, and drag things to and from the card without having to read the WHOLE card at once?

So did I. So I wrote Dexter. And finally, there was simplicity.

If nothing else, it was great MFC development practice, and a nice demo!

• Dexter v1.0

For anyone who likes to, um, archive backup copies of their CD-ROMs, here's a utility that just might come in handy. It detects and eliminates reproducible ECC/EDC codes from CD image files, in order to help compress them better.

How effective is this? Well, in one test, a RAR archive of the Dreamcast game Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 was reduced in size by nearly 18%.

Give it a try, who knows. Oh, and the source code is here too.

• ECM page

What started as a little side project to SD3 has finally ended in a finished patch, thanks to Dark Force and Tomato. Grab it, play it, live it, love it.

• DeJap's web site

I am now pleased to announce that Dark Force, coordinator of DeJap and arguably the hardest workin' man in ROM hacking, has picked up my Bahamut Lagoon translation project along with translator Tomato. They've recently posted some new screen shots of their progress.

• DeJap's web site

Three new NSFs have been added to the Bleep! page: Magic of Scheherazade, Marble Madness, and Ultima: Quest of the Avatar. Could a new version of Bleep! be far behind? Time will tell.

• Your parents help you hook it up.

My first new software release in a while, this little utility rips .WAV files out of various Playstation games which use Konami's VB2 streaming music format. So far, these include Castlevania Chronicle: Akumajou Dracula and the Dance Dance Revolution series.

• This is the cool Konami sound!

Rejoice, for the Dracula X manual scans have been re-added.

• Now showing

Yes, after four years of hosting by North Carolina State University, it's time for good old Neill Corlett's Home Page to move on.

And, as if that weren't exciting enough, I've adopted a new look, and a new "news" format to keep everyone up-to-date on what I'm doing, or not doing!

Remember: Reload early and often!

If you're missing anything that was on my old Home Page, check back soon. I'm still in the process of moving things over.